Watch this, Malaysians!

I just have to put this up, please watch this, Malaysian or not, we’ve got hope!

Come to think about it, as part of the techie community, what can we do on our part? Leave some comments on ideas!

Updates 20/5/08: I was suprised to hear the song on the no. 1 (aherm) Chinese radio station last night, with the DJ introducing the song simply as “The next song is Pit (Pete) Teo’s Here. in. My. Home.” (with pauses after every English word). No further details were given and the song was subsequently played. I would bet with you 99% of the audience would just thought “why the heck is there an English song? I want my XXX (input any funky tween-screaming names)!”. Without the company of the brilliant video, the English lyrics just couldn’t send the message across well enough to the Chinese audience. I applaud the station’s effort (or its parent company’s effort or just a coincidence that the parent company owns other language stations as well) to play the song, but I beg them to at least highlight the purpose of the song (I suspect the DJ isn’t aware) to clear the audience puzzling doubts! Honestly I wouldn’t pay attention as well if I wasn’t introduced to the song before this.

Updates 22/05/08: Credit has to be given where it is due. Last night the same DJ had introduced the song by stating its purpose as “a song that talks about unity in Malaysia”. Perhaps he read my blog lol. Well done anyway…

Tribute to Mourinho

I can’t help but to write a tribute to Mourinho following his departure from Chelsea. His real intention for leaving on mutual consent would probably be disclosed in his future autobiography, but one thing for sure he is not leaving for footballing reasons. Some said he should have left end of last season when he had a nasty feud with Abramovich; some said he was sacked due to a series of poor results; some said his longstanding and worsening relationship with Abramovich finally exploded after the draw against Rosenborg Champions League match.

Whatever. Possibly Chelsea, or maybe even Real Madrid, are the only clubs in the world that will sack (although no one knows if he was sacked or not) a coach who brought so much success to the club. More notably Chelsea had not won a single English Premier League title for 50 years before Mourinho’s arrival to the club. Would you, as a chairman of a club, sack a coach who had won your club 2 English Premier League titles, 2 FA Cups and a League Cup in THREE years time? Abramovich knows he has the financial capability to bring in another world class coach to coach his part time pet toy, and that “capability” of his is pure nuisance to the footballing world - imagine you were sacked by your company after you led your company to become the industry no. 1. But oh well, it all boiled down to your relationship with the boss, and Mourinho, one with strong personality, would certainly fail in the boss’s ass-kissing competition.

I have to admit, Chelsea is boring to watch. But they are deadly efficient and they have thug-like winning mentality - which make them so annoying to watch. But that is certainly the “way” to win consistently. So far, only the Champions League title eluded Chelsea, and in two attempts they lost to a Liverpool team in the semi finals which entertained as much as Chelsea on the pitch. But some said the missing of the Champions League trophy in Abramovich’s trophy’s cabinet is the primary reason for Mourinho’s demise, I said why don’t you just pay someone you know somewhere and get it …. just like that? I cannot see anyone else would be able to lead Chelsea to a Champions League title nearer than Mourinho did in the next few seasons with the same bunch of players they have now. Yes, they are all world class players worth a total of a whopping 150 million pounds, but the morale and the spirit of the team that Mourinho forged over the past few years would leave a big scar on Chelsea dressing room atmosphere after his departure. And I can foresee more fan boys to follow his lead (possibly a reunion in his next club).

Also, I could not understand why the press label Chelsea’s performance in the last 4 games (in which they draw 3 and lost 1) as “lackluster”. Did they watch how Manchester United play this season so far? Chelsea players certainly are fitter, playing with a higher spirit and tactically better. I would label Manchester United’s performance this season as lackluster, but certainly not Chelsea.

And by the way, I’m a Manchester United fan. Instead of crying over, I’m actually grinning over the prospect of a disarray Chelsea team arriving at Old Trafford this Sunday. Let’s hope John Terry and other Mourinho’s fan boys would pay a tribute to Mourinho and put in a real “lackluster” performance, as the saying goes - “let the football do the talking”.

Can’t wait. Grin. Avram who?

Friends vs Myself

Below is a list of activities some of my old friends engaged in recently:

• Work
• Socializing
• Traveling to countries such as Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, US, UK, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, India, Bahrain, Egypt
• Blogging

As a comparison, below is a list of activities I engaged in recently:

• Work, like a dog
• Procrastinating
• Reading/writing
• Traveling to cities such as Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya
• Blogging soullessly (well my blog is photo-less, video-less, boring and has a virtually empty About)

Phew, that makes me feel better. At least if I set myself as a benchmark, I still come to know of some friends who:

• Work, like a dog and sometimes like a cow
• Procrastinate
• Procrastinate
• Procrastinate
• Travel to cities such as Kuala Lumpur, and … is Subang a city yet?
• What? What blog?

Still, that prompts me to ask myself why I have not been as active as some of my friends have been. Should I start travel around the world to admire the beauty of some ancient/modern cities? Should I start travel around the world to observe various unique culture which so often have been the source of many humanity conflicts? Should I start travel around the world to realize I’m indeed so lucky to have food and shelter everyday? Or should I start socializing (well… call up some old friends for coffee during weekends) and expand my social network?

“Experience and see things with your very own eyes on a foreign land is nothing like the world you see from your couch at home”, once my travel-ladden friend told me wisely. “Get to know more people and add them into your social network list. The list will be immensely useful to you in the future”, once my friend told me with a phone next to his ear and another on his finger tips. My genuine lack of interests in both traveling and socializing often raise eyebrows among my friends. While they had been looking up and down for jobs that require frequent traveling to the most distant part of the world; I took up a job that require no traveling with a lot of time flexibilities. While they are busy calling up long lost acquintances to thicken their network list; I have been sitting at home procrastinating,  gaming, reading and writing. “It’s just that you have different interests, nothing to worry about!”, another friend of mine tried to tell me “you are just inherently lazy” in a nicer way.

Sometimes I really do admire their energy and desire to visit all sorts of places; gather up with friends to talk about virtually anything on earth and organizing all kinds of social activities to have fun. Very often I thought I’m borned lazy but later I realized I’m just way too purpose-driven. Everything that I was about to do I would ask myself “What for?”. Let’s backpack to Cambodia! What for? To experience and have fun! What for? Fine. Let’s have a drink with X, Y, Z! What for? To social and chat about anything! What for? Okay. When you asked too much “What for?”, your life will be shrinked down to a level where you only do what you need (work for food, entertainment, spend time with family) and like (your interests/hobibies) to do and nothing else. And in my case, I am increasingly isolated from the community around me and I feel myself getting further and further away from the customs and culture that nurtured me since I was a baby. Sounds pathetic? Not really. I know I have tonnes of other things that I feel purposeful to work on, but due to the lack of talent, guts, determination and opportunities, I was defeated by my own self and… life goes on.

So did you do something which you didn’t feel like doing at all recently? Try asking yourself “What for?” and choose not to bother about it next time, you could feel much better.

And what is the purpose of me writing this? This.

Bangsa Malaysia

This is an article that every Malaysian should read. Say what you want, segregation is still an eminent issue in Malaysia. Walk on the street you meet friendly Malaysians everywhere regardless of races; deep down their hearts, take off their masks and how many of them would consider themselves as Bangsa Malaysia without first identify with their own racial ethnicity?

It is pointless to talk about global human unity if we can’t even achieve national unity in a peaceful multiracial country. Let’s kill off the traditional racial perceptions you inherited and stop spreading them to your future generations.

For humanity.

Drained

Well, I promised myself to write more often when I started this blog, although I did but not on this space that is. Writing academic reports and essays in length of 2000-3000 words every 2-3 weeks for the past few months had drained me mentally, not to mention the amount of hectic researches (20-30 academic papers analysis) each report/essay required. When I finally got some free time for myself, I would be too tired mentally to even “think”. And I still have a 2000 words draft on economics still sitting here in this blog waiting for me to complete. I have to admit I have lost track of how to continue, well I guess it can wait… after so long.

While writing these time-consuming and “frustrating” academic papers, it’s hard for me not to compare them with my undergraduates’ assignments writing. The most notable difference lies in the strictness of the local academicians and foreign academicians, or should I be more specific - Australian academicians. Australian academicians are very particular about plagiarism - they will expel you from the university if they found you copy just one single sentence without giving credit to the original author. I do not remember how many sentences I have copied (either word by word or paraphrasing) without referencing back then in my undergraduate days, all I know is that I graduated with a Book Award. How ironic.

Some (including some lecturers I know) argue that there is a vast gap in marking leniency between undergraduate and postgraduate studies, where undergraduates are usually forgiven for non-excessive plagiarism. I do not know how much truth that argument has, perhaps some foreign university’s (foreign prominent university, not University ABCDEFG in GFEDCBA) degree holder can provide some insights. What I do know is that there are not much differences in the assignments that I was required to do on both levels. Perhaps the most sparkling difference is postgraduate assignments required more in depth research and “quality” analysis/recommendations; while undergraduates assignments required more showcase of understanding of topics/subjects with less hectic researches and sometimes analysis are not even necessary. However, both levels required you to undertake research. And if you write something by applying what you obtained from your research results, you should do proper referencing.

Knowing the merciless markers that I am facing, I have taken extra effort in making sure I did my referencing accordingly. I pumped in my own original opinions and arguments as much as I could but it seems these are not enough. The “plagiarism-collusion-detection” software that the university uses detected one of my assignment had 16% “matching” with others’ work. I’m not sure if this is bad news for me but I do know that the markers will investigate whenever the matching percentage goes over 10%. I am confident that I did not copy a single sentence but only time will tell. My assignment marks and comments will tell how strict these Australians really are.

Albeit all these pain and suffer that I had to go through, I think I learned much much more this way than the 4 years I spent during my undergraduate studies (on different subjects). The strictness on plagiarism forced me to understand what I am about to write thoroughly. Shouldn’t this level of strictness applied in our local universities, where plagiarism and collusion are common among students? By enforcing strict rules on these two problems, I believe students will start to learn instead of mere “studying”, in which I define “study” as “copy, paste and jumble up information obtained from the internet/assignments-from-senior in a proper format and submit to lecturer” and “memorize the materials given and reproduce them as closely related to the materials as much as possible in the examination at the end of the academic semester”. I’m sick of seeing academic excellence graduates that did so well because they “know” how to “study”, in contrary; I’m in sympathy of those brilliant minds who dropped out of university because they refused to act dumb and “study”.

Apparently it would still be a long way to go before any drastic changes can be made on our local education systems, as I get to know from Wilz. But there are just another 2 weeks to go before my another 3000 words assignments due… ouch!

Let’s hope I won’t wait for another 4 months to write again.

Malaysians and Books

Do Malaysians read? I remembered vaguely I read somewhere sometime ago that an average Malaysian read less than a book a year. I’m not sure if that study considered magazines and fictions in the list of “books” that Malaysians read (should blogs be counted?), but if the truth is the contrary, something is very very wrong.

What prompts me to wonder is what happened during a recent lecture that I attended. The lecturer, in his usual egoistic self, was differentiating the mentality of Asian and Australian students, based on a study conducted by University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The report highlighted the saddening, but true fact that Asian students study only the given materials for the very purpose of passing exams, while lacking the hunger and desire for knowledge. The lecturer then asked a female working lady sitting in front of me a question that silenced the class - “Tell me honestly, how many books have you read in the past five years?” (apart from academic reference books). The class was silenced, either everyone was eagerly anticipating her answer, or worried that he will be the next in line. Nevertheless the lady gave an answer that surprised the lecturer, “I’m not quite sure, but humm… five?”

That would be an encouraging answer if the results from the study that I get to know of is true. At least she has read one whole book a year! But to the disappointment of the lecturer, when he prompted further, the five “books” that the lady read are actually Reader’s Digest - the monthly magazine. The lecturer grinned, much to his satisfaction, said “Magazines are not books, my dear. I’m glad you are Malaysian, I nearly thought you were an illegal immigrant!” The class burst into laughter over his cold but not so funny joke, and the topic was over.

In fact, one can easily notice the reading trend of Malaysians by observing the distribution of the customers population in a bookstore. I frequented Popular, MPH, Times and recently Borders, and I noticed the most populated area would always be the magazine sections. One would observe males and females standing around holding a copy of the latest automobile/computer/women/men/entertainment magazine, reading it from page one till the last, and would leave the bookstore without purchasing it. Walk around the bookstore and one would notice the teenagers sitting around reading would be holding a copy of the latest manga.

I wonder why Malaysians don’t read books, I repeat, BOOKS. The mentality study conducted by the USQ of Australia explained it very well - it is down to the old and rich Asian Culture that we inherited. We believe in obedience, we believe in following our own ancient teachings and philosophies, without questioning. That is what Australians found out about us, and I think they are spot on. Our culture is that we believe in whatever the teacher says, or whatever a book says, without probing further to investigate whether the teacher or the book is indeed correct. This “probing” or the desire of knowing more is actually the main push behind reading - the mechanism of knowledge gaining. I cited this example because it is still fresh in my mind. By no means I’m doing a thorough studies on this topic here, or else I would have to go deep into the education systems in Malaysia, the parents’ mentality, and perhaps the general Malaysians’ attitude - ignorant.

To me, I read because I have a lot of unanswered questions. It’s that simple. And I’m glad I’m still hungry.

Why blog?

Reason is simple. Because it comes with the registration. And I’m supposed to write something more meaningful for Earthwatcher.

The tag line reveals a lot of current views of my life - a lot of wishes but none was pursued. This is more like a place for me to feel better, to breathe a sigh of relief, before putting all the good wishes to “initiate change” behind and continue on with my “life”.

There are folks with split personalities online and offline, and being one of them looks like the only way for me to do anything for this beautiful world… if ranting is in the scope of “doing something” that is.